Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Everest, Vegans Can Do Anything -- And More!

One is reminded of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story ... "To infinity -- and beyond!".

It seems that people have this warped idea of vegans being malnourished and weak,” Strydom said in an interview on Monash’s blog. “By climbing the seven summits we want to prove that vegans can do anything and more.

There are over 200 frozen corpses up on Everest and over 250 people have died attempting to climb it. Over 4000 people have made it to the summit and back.

"Proving" that vegans can do "anything" -- even without the "more" is certainly not a scientific quest. Since one of them died and neither made it, did they prove that vegans CAN'T do "anything"? We really didn't need the climb to prove that they can't do "anything" -- they can't eat a hamburger for goodness sake!

First man attempts to kill God -- then man attempts to find "meaning". Climbing Everest seems meaningful to some -- is dying on it meaningful? Is a death that happens in a "quest" more meaningful than some other sort of death in a world with no fixed values? As we have discussed before, these days every man believes that he is his own god.

“A lot of people say, ‘Maybe it’s not your turn, maybe it’s not your fate, maybe the mountain is telling you not to climb it,’” he said. “But I still have a passion for it. When I realized that, I decided I have to go back.”

We live in an enlightened scientific age when "prayer" needs to be hidden away as a "private matter". Christians seem "primitive" -- "bitter clingers", for still having faith in a religion practiced by billions over two thousand years.

Getting messages from a mountain however -- there is no problem with THAT!

Certainly it is sad to see people die on Everest -- for nothing. Four thousand people have climbed it, you are not "proving" anything other than the weather cooperated, your system didn't fail under low oxygen conditions, no killing slides or avalanches, etc.

Should we "stop them"? No, in a world where people led meaningful lives, far far less would grasp at such a straw to try to bootstrap their meaningless existence toward some meaning for risking their life to scale a peak.

We don't live in that world -- in a meaningless world, dying on Everest is no more or less meaningful than dying of heroin overdose in some backwater town, or from gang-banger gunfire in Chicago.

"At this point, what does it matter?". It could be that Hildebeast provided the most appropriate motto for the post-America BOistan wasteland.